Fifth World Medicine: A Spiritual-Physical Journey to the Next World

By Dr. John C. Hughes

What begins as a hunger for authentic medicine in a young medical student evolves into a quest for an entirely new world, a Fifth World, where the line between what is material and spiritual has been dissolved. In Fifth World Medicine, you will explore the lands, myths, and prophecies of the Hopi People, chase after coyotes in the deserts of Arizona, enter a sweat lodge with a shamanic healer in the far North Country of Canada, embrace the power of silence and the medicine of enlightenment, go on a vision quest in the depths of the Grand Canyon, and find your roots in the sacred temple of the human body and the soil of Mother Earth.

Fifth World Medicine dares to challenge Westerners and anyone who dwells in the Fourth World, a techno-industrial world where dualistic thinking and linear, scientific methodologies assert their hegemony—leading to disease in Mother Earth and her inhabitants. Fifth World Medicine provides an exit path for those who hunger for something more than the Fourth World. Fifth World Medicine satisfies humanity’s deep, collective hunger for lasting health as it integrates one’s spirit, mind, body, and Earth. If you feel this hunger, follow the wolf on this journey to the Fifth World—a journey guaranteed to test your worldview and entire understanding of what is true.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: May 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9798765228319

Dr. John C. Hughes

Dr. John Hughes practices traditional osteopathic and integrative medicine in Colorado. Dr. Hughes graduated from the Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine and received training in family practice at the University of Arizona. His current clinic, Aspen Integrative Medicine, provides the latest innovations in modern and natural medicine, including regenerative injection therapy for sports injuries as well as a patented protocol for traumatic brain injury. Dr. Hughes descends from the Wolf Clan of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation. Dr. Hughes honors the wolf and his Cherokee ancestors through his intuitive medical practice and way of life. Fifth World Medicine is his first book. Dr. Hughes currently lives near Aspen, Colorado with his wife, dog, and two cats. He regularly enjoys trail running and skiing in the wilderness near his home. fifthworldmedicine.com

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Copyright © 2022 Dr. John C. Hughes.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

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ISBN: 979-8-7652-2832-6 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-7652-2833-3 (hc)

ISBN: 979-8-7652-2831-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022908330

Balboa Press rev. date:  10/07/2022

I am deeply enjoying Fifth World Medicine.... As I am reading, rabbit holes appear and lead me into other interesting areas. The book lends itself well to almost a daily meditation, where after a chapter, the desire to digest and explore the concepts overcomes the temptation to rush onwards. In particular, engaging me with the physical world... It’s beautiful.

Ben Germann, RN

Fifth World Medicine is a highly thought-provoking, enlightening and powerful book that forces readers to step outside of their narrow Fourth World thinking to begin dreaming of a world where dreams can actually thrive. I will be happily recommending this book to all of my family, friends and colleagues, as The Book They Must Read in 2022!

Arlene Seegerts

Grandmother, Teacher and Author of THE FOUR COMMITMENTS FOR TEENAGERS: How to Create & Live the Life of Your Dreams - GUARANTEED!

In his brilliant book, Fifth World Medicine, Dr. John C. Hughes invites us to prepare to enter the world-healing, transformational experience of the Fifth World. Dr. Hughes qualifies himself as our ideal spiritual mentor and guide by sharing his many-layered journey to healing and wisdom. He invites us to examine and prepare ourselves for embarking on and living the sacred path to peace and love in his next book, Fifth World Medicine: The Science of Healing People and Their Planet. Fifth World Medicine Books I and II are extraordinary and timely guidebooks for all who hunger for wholeness, yearn to be one with the Divine and are committed to healing others and our sacred planet.

Martha Susan Horton, Ph.D.

Director, The Amate Institute, Pensacola, Florida

Developer of the Amate Growth Work method for achieving emotional maturity in adulthood.

Author, The Seashell People: Growing Up in Adulthood in softcover,

Growing up in Adulthood: The Journey to Emotional Maturity, M. Evans & Co., Inc. (1990, 1992).

Dr Hughes’ book Fifth World Medicine is a great vision on the future of medicine and culture. Only by restoring our humanity to the field of medicine and returning to right relation to our larger ecosystem will we be able to heal as a humanity and truly thrive. All healthcare practitioners who share a vision of a sustainable future would do well to listen and consider these deep teachings.

Dan Engle, MD

Author of A Dose of Hope. Founder of Full Spectrum Medicine and Thank You Life.

Through his own personal journey, Dr. John Hughes shows us what is possible. In a world full of chaos, he helps us find our authentic truth through conscious awareness. With grounded contemplative practice we can begin to move towards a more natural state of being and start the process of regaining not only our own health but the health of our planet through Fifth World medicine.

Jodie Rooks, RN

Only those

who have learned to live on the land

where the waters run pure

will find sanctuary. …

You must go to where the Eagles fly,

to where the Wolf roams,

to where the Bear lives.

Here you will find life

because they will always go to where the water is pure

and the air can be breathed.

Live where the trees are old.

They are the lungs of this Earth,

and they purify the air. …

They can change it by breathing and they give clean air back to you.

Where the snow falls,

you will find protection from the plagues and viruses.

The snow is a great purifier.

Go to where the Mother’s blanket heals your body

as well as your emotions,

where she will give you new dreams of the emerging world.

If you learn to live in these places,

you will live through these times. …

The Fifth World is the one we are about to enter.

In this new world,

we will learn to balance our spiritual and physical natures.¹

—Prophecy given to Ghost Wolf, a Lakota pipe carrier

CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1 Hunger Pains

Chapter 2 Hopi Peaks, Spirits, People, and Messages

Chapter 3 Osteopathic Coyote Medicine

Chapter 4 Wolf Medicine

Chapter 5 Exodus

Chapter 6 God, Philosophy, and Medicine

Chapter 7 Spirituality and Medicine: Silence Is Power

Chapter 8 Love: The Medicine of Enlightenment

Chapter 9 Healing Ceremonies: Spiritual–Physical Medicine

Chapter 10 Womb Spaces

Chapter 11 A Grand Canyon Vision Quest

Chapter 12 Sexual Power and Healing

Chapter 13 The Vision: A Fifth World

Chapter 14 The Hero’s Journey: A Return to Darkness

Epilogue

Appendix

Notes

About the Author

PREFACE

H unger, or longing for someone or something, can drive us insane or inspire great works of art or acts of valor. Hunger fans the flames of identity, courage, and love in all heroes of ancient and present eras. Hunger inspires the singer to create a first radio hit and the lover to ask for a first date. However, for hunger to transform us, our works, or our planet, one essential element must prevail—an element only a few are bold enough to voluntarily choose.

The essential element behind this transformation is an open heart to the quest necessary to fulfill our hunger. If worthwhile, a hunger-inspired quest requires that we open our hearts or fail. Maria Coffey, in her book Explorers of the Infinite: The Secret Spiritual Lives of Extreme Athletes, describes the quest as one in which our bodies and souls gain full exposure to this world and beyond. Coffey quotes Sir Thomas Moore: We must live in the freefall of Infinity; standing at the edge, the heart opens.¹

What does Coffey’s phrase mean? She comments:

It is often the hardest, most challenging experiences of our lives that crack us open. For some people, these experiences are chosen, or accepted as consequence of risk-taking. For others—for most of us—they come without warning. Unlikely gifts that rip away our layers of insulation, allowing us glimpses of the mysterious, the ineffable—the infinite realms of human consciousness.²

To sum this up, to have an open-hearted pursuit of our hunger, we must be vulnerable enough to put at risk our core understandings of life, even our temporal identity as only physical beings, to find fulfillment. Carlos Castaneda sums up this truth in The Teachings of Don Juan: The end result which shamans like Don Juan sought for their disciples was a realization which, by its simplicity, is so difficult to attain: that we are beings that are going to die … We must voluntarily acquiesce to infinity … Our lives originate in infinity, and they end up wherever they originated: infinity.³

Ultimately, our hungers and their resulting quests for fulfillment stretch beyond our imagination or desire into an exploration of the infinite. Following this hunger—with an open heart—toward an ineffable, infinite destination can lead to great transformation of our beings. Perhaps our hunger, all hunger, exists as a collective hunger, a primal hunger that all humans (or even all beings) have as an innate part of current existence. Some observers describe this collective and even individual hunger as desperation. Henry David Thoreau supports this line of thinking when he writes, The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.⁴ Desperation is a strong word. It literally means, at the end of one’s rope or tether; at the end of one’s endurance or resources, out of options; exasperated, frustrated.⁵

Are we really all that hungry inside, at the ends of our ropes, unable to get any more fulfillment or any more sustenance in what the Hopi people call the Fourth World? Has our hunger reached the point of desperation, or is it merely the ache of an unfulfilling life? And if we admit to this hunger, are we open to the point of risking our hearts and all our beliefs to seek full satisfaction beyond our current world? And what exactly is it that we are truly desperate for in this next world: companionship, food, comfort, or something more? And will pursuing our hunger’s fulfillment really lead us on a journey of great transformation to a better world—a Fifth World, perhaps? What are we, as fellow two-legged travelers on a whirling planet in this time and space, longing for right now?

CHAPTER 1

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Hunger Pains

I n the spring of 2007, the asphalt streets of the water-hoarding megalopolis of Phoenix, Arizona, cooked with the heat from extended days of the soon-to-be relentless desert summer sunlight. After finishing my shift at the medical clinic, I crept along the hot streets in my air-conditioned Prius to the suburban house my roommate owned in the outskirts of Phoenix in the metro town known as Glendale. No one was home. I fixed a meal but was overcome by loneliness mixed with hunger for something else.

I longed for something more than the standard fare of suburban life. I had just over a month left of osteopathic medical school and was glad to be almost finished. I’d passed all my medical exams and received confirmation of my residency. My life was cruising along like the convection currents that swirled above the baking Phoenix streets. But on that day, April 22, 2007, none of my medical education mattered. Something else beckoned me from beyond the city streets and the eight-to-five, doc-in-a-box clinic life. I craved raw, unplanned, natural terrain that was not gridlocked or surrounded by walls, not governed by stop signs and photo-radar, unaffected by modern civilization. That evening I wanted a piece of natural freedom—freedom from being told how to fit in, how to think, and what to say as an aspiring medical doctor. That kind of freedom necessitates natural space and solitude.

I packed up a red Dagger Ace kayak, paddle, and other boating gear in my Prius and drove north. Water, cold water, called to me. I steered the Prius toward Highway 101 then turned up Cave Creek Highway. As I passed through the town of Cave Creek, Arizona, the world began to open up. The saguaro, creosote, cholla, and mesquite foliage took over the evening landscape as the city drifted into the distance. The air felt cooler, even at eighty-eight degrees, and the Prius windows fell away to reveal a wild, dark desert landscape. I reached the turnoff for Bartlett Lake and headed east. Just before reaching the lake, I steered onto a dark, bumpy washboard road and carefully guided the Prius down to the Verde River.

After parking on a beach of river stones, I stepped out of the car and looked up. Stars previously obscured by the yellow glare of the city jumped out at me. The river spoke with a rustling voice of changing overtones but constant volume. Her appeal ushered me into movement. I grabbed the kayak and then put on the skirt, life jacket, and helmet. Darkness surrounded me as I paddled upstream into the gently rippling waters on the dark Verde River.

I paddled several hundred yards until I reached some flat pools. I was about seventy-five yards below the Bartlett Dam. The water was cold. The stars glistened in the sky above and deep in the water below. Everything felt still and full of motion at the same time. It was timeless. It was surreal. It was dark. It was Earth Day. It was my birthday. I was alone, and it felt perfect.

While spinning in quiet circles on the dark river, words of a poem drifted to the surface of my mind.

River Stargazer

Shimmering ripples

Reflect tiny twinklings.

Far, far above,

These lights gaze

Perpetually

Into liquid depths.

The paddler’s pupils

Open wide,

Peering at moving stillness

Of light and dark.

Patterns of dippers,

Of clusters, galaxies,

Nearby planets, and nebulae

Are all smoothly shifting

With water and sky.

Dynamic stillness

Permeates the scene.

The river,

She takes the heat,

The silence, the motion, the light

And transforms them.

Employing her rapids

And her pools,

She juxtaposes fast and still,

Bringing paddlers

And planets together.

"Gaze far, far above;

Gaze deep into your soul.

Feel the whispering

Breaths of air;

Feel watery torrents

In between, beside,

And all around.

Embrace all speeds,

All temperatures,

Even the coldness

In your core.

It is your destiny

To die.

Welcome the

End of life

As a gift

Of eternity.

As the heavens shift

In green water currents,

Bubbling up and down,

So does thy cycle.

As poles wobble,

Earth revolves

And rotates into day.

So will death

Come to an end

Again and again."

So on the face

Of a planet’s river,

Listen, speak, float,

Live, breathe, die,

And paddle …

At once …

Forever.

Rereading the poem now, it is interesting how the themes of death and the end of life come up, particularly on my birthday! Yet thinking back, I’d had an eerie feeling of resonance and somberness on that dark river. What did these words mean? Had I really authored the poem, or was it dictated by some higher heavenly force—perhaps the Verde River herself?

These questions persisted as my medical school days ended. A few weeks later, in May 2007, I found myself wandering through the public library in Tempe, Arizona, where I stumbled upon a book called 2012: The Return of the Quetzalcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck. I usually steer clear of such new age books, but the words resonated with me at that time. What stood out initially was this passage:

According to Buckminster Fuller, evolution takes place through ‘precession.’ … ‘Precession’ might best be defined as polar ‘wobble,’ akin to that of a spinning top, or a gyroscope on a table as its speed increases and decreases over time. The earth completes a cycle of precession every 25,000 to 26,000 years, and the planet is now coming towards the end/beginning of one of these cycles.¹

Did Pinchbeck and Buckminster Fuller paddle the same river and confer with the stars? Or use the same plant medicine? What is this precessional cycle of the planets? How does the precession of the Earth relate to human life?

Questions bounced around in my head after reading Pinchbeck’s book. I read about DMT (dimethyltryptamine), pyramids, aliens, native peoples, past lives, crop circles, Burning Man, and astronomy in Pinchbeck’s book, but what was the real thesis of Buckminster Fuller, Pinchbeck, and my river poem?

Pinchbeck writes about the evolution of humans as coinciding with the precessional cycle of the Earth and the end of the Fourth World as described in Hopi prophecies. Pinchbeck inspires hope and empowerment in his audience, along with igniting an appetite for this newly evolved Fifth World. His book, 2012: The Return of the Quetzalcoatl, brings many mysterious events together with an attempt to ground them all in a real astronomical, evolutionary process.

Whether I agreed with its synthesis of the many mysterious events into a cohesive story or not, I was sold on the book’s message. Something in this world had to change. Most modern humans are not living sustainably in sync with our sacred planet, and our Earth may decide soon to shake us free, to find our gravitational mother somewhere else in the galaxy or beyond. The exact year predicted for this change (2012 or beyond) mattered little to me; Earth’s timing rarely matches our antiquated Gregorian clocks.² What mattered to me was that the shift had begun, and fulfillment of this ache, this longing, this driving hunger in myself (and perhaps other humans) might be found in the newly evolved Earth and her truly natural inhabitants.

Knowledge of a possible new world, the Fifth World, along with new way of being in this world, inspired the same hunger that I felt on April 22, 2007, when I went to the Verde River to kayak at night with heady verse spinning around as I rotated and wobbled with the mother planet. However, attempting to understand potential changes in our planetary reality did not really satisfy the painful ache; understanding only increased the hunger. It felt as if there was something I needed to do to assist with the evolution of consciousness of the Earth and all her inhabitants. But pursuing this hunger and its possible resolution in the Fifth World would have to wait.

My exploration into this new age writing about the Fifth World was short-lived, as my life quickly became preoccupied with the daily grind of my medical internship, in what was perhaps the worst year of my adult working life. For one year (which felt like three years), I became a slave of the hospital, upper-level medical residents, and the attending physicians. Mental, physical, psychological, and even spiritual hunger and desperation were the result, because as a medical intern, you do not get enough food, sleep, exercise, or personal time. And you must learn a lot of medicine in this state of mind, staying alert enough that you don’t kill or permanently injure someone who comes to the ER, the ICU, the clinic, or the hospital floor. In any other profession, it would be illegal to treat employees in this manner. In some cases, young medical doctors have died while driving home from the hospital, often after spending thirty or more hours taking care of patients and writing orders. My own life was at risk after a long night and morning of being on call (that’s twenty-four to thirty hours of work, often with two hours of sleep or less). While driving my blue Prius at forty-five miles per hour, I drifted into brief slumber and veered left of the yellow line just below a small hill. I woke up alive and with my car intact, but that drive could have easily been my last. It would really suck to die this way, I thought, handcuffed to my life’s steering wheel by insomnia and apathy. Modern medical training was slowly killing my spirit and, at that instant, had almost killed my body as well!

Except for my readings about the Hopi or the Fifth World and my simple life living in my geodesic dome home, I really struggled initially with my life in the world of modern Western medicine—which was 95 percent of my existence. I hated giving screaming kids largely unnecessary circumcisions or toxic shots (full of aluminum, mercury, formaldehyde, and so on). I hated discussing which antibiotic was best for some illness that was probably best left to natural courses. I hated giving pain medications to people who were so overmedicated that they looked like zombies. I hated living in a mostly windowless hospital and sleeping two hours or less at night. I hated working all weekend. I hated the fact that most babies were delivered in hospitals by strange, sleepless medical interns or residents rather than in loving homes surrounded by midwives. While I loved babies, children, and all people, I did not like how the rules of Western medicine treated these patients as if they were all the same, according to something called a diagnosis. Losing interest in my own life and in medicine, I began to care less and less about what drugs and shots I gave to patients. This type of modern medicine violated my sense of what patients’ bodies really needed. I was literally going through the motions to get through this process of medical education. I was checking out and felt I had little to live for. I knew there was a better way to live and a better way to do medicine, but at that time I could only hunger and hope for a different kind of life and medicine in some future day—if I survived my medical internship. In my inner and outer worlds, I was at the point of desperation. (Note: For a medical intern, it is par for the course to drift into depression; mean prevalence for depression averages 36 percent but can reach as high as 80 percent in some training programs.)³

In this life of quiet desperation as a young medical doctor, something still burned in my soul as I yearned for a better world, perhaps the Fifth World described by Hopi prophecies. It pulled at me through the challenges of my desperate life. I was driven to understand more about the Hopi people. At the time, I knew a fellow resident physician at the University of Arizona was from the Hopi tribe. I briefly thought about asking my Hopi resident colleague more about his heritage and culture. However, this resident also seemed to be caught up in a grinding desperation; he was slaving away to become a family practice physician to help patients (or earn a better living than that which was possible on the reservation) by prescribing pharmaceutical drugs, immunizations, referrals, lab tests, and all the other diagnostic and treatment tools available to us in Western medicine. From my outside observations, he seemed more focused on his goals in the Western, modern civilization than I, a mostly English Caucasian person with maybe 5 percent Cherokee Native blood, ever was.

A burning question at that time begged for an answer: Why does any of this medical science matter if our world is soon coming to an end or becoming uninhabitable because of our unsustainable, modern civilized way of living? Medical doctoring is important but seemed ancillary to the larger questions of consciousness, polar precession, ecological catastrophe, and prophetic destinies.

In retrospect, I may have bought into more of Pinchbeck’s writing than I probably should have at the time. Since then, I’ve found that the date of 2012 and even an apocalyptic end of the Fourth World just isn’t the truth, or at least the whole truth. In The Order of Days, David Stuart offers a balanced critique of Pinchbeck and other self-appointed gurus who claim to know much about Maya or Hopi religion.

For Pinchbeck, 2012 is … a time when people must embrace ‘indigenous shamanic knowledge’ to ensure human survival and awareness in a time of world crisis … [His] self-centered writings are a bit hard to take, but they do appeal to many who seek a broader philosophical context for the economic, political, and environmental problems our world now confronts. That may be fine, but